Cartoon Network has decided to (once again) drag the Mystery Inc. gang out of homeostasis and though initially I was a little confused as to why they would even bother, I took a look at the first episode of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Inc and I must say, I was quite pleasantly surprised.
The first thing that must be acknowledged if this article is to continue (and by the looks of things, it is) is that the original Scooby-Doo series was lacking. To say the least. On top of the show itself being absurdly boring to look at and even worse in motion, the gang are the most one-dimensional group of characters I can be bothered to think of (unless we compare them to the other characters in the Hanna-Barbera stock). Seriously, think of two things about each member of the gang that make them unique characters.
Go ahead.
I'll wait.
So, here's what you probably came up with right off the bat:
Velma: She has glasses and is also smart.
Shaggy/Scooby: They are easily frightened and frequently hungry.
Fred: NOTHING
Daphne: NOTHING
These answers are all correct, unfortunately, you did forget to answer in the form of a question.
That's right, two members of the Mystery Inc. gang have no discernible character attributes, two of them are the same character and one of Velma's character traits is her glasses.
In a desperate bid to make these characters characters, we've been met recently with What's New Scooby-Doo which retained essentially the same formula as the classic Where Are you? shows but in a modern setting and as of 2006, we've received Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue.
It's not discernible from this intro, but in this show, Shaggy inherited a fourtune, whereupon he and Scooby became secret agents with a Bond-esque Arch-Nemesis name Dr. Phibes. Yes, really. Look it up.
Go ahead.
I'll wait.
Anyway, these shows failed to add anything new to the character's character and in one case (I'll let you guess which one) managed to be the worst thing that has ever happened.
Now we're looking at Mystery Inc. which manages to seriously blow my expectations for what a Scooby-Doo show can actually be. Here we've got Scooby, Shaggy and the rest of the gang living in a coastal town renowned for the sheer volume of unexplained super-natural activity that occurs within. Needless to say, the gang does what they do, solving mysteries and ruining everyone else's fun (and the town's profitable business as a tourist trap) in the process, such to the point that they apparently get arrested with some degree of frequency for cracking these craaaazy capers.
The characters depicted here are basically what we've come to expect, but the fact that the show viciously lampshades the one-dimensional characters of past incarnations (Fred is so obsessed with building traps and catching ghosts, that he is blind to the very... Eager Daphne's less than subtle advances) and the promise of an over-arching story linking every episode together have me legitimately interested in a Scooby-Doo show. Something I never thought would happen.
It doesn't hurt that Scooby's playing a smaller role, either. Christ, he's annoying.
